


Cargo

by robotboy



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodhi Rook Lives, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, M/M, Mentor/Protégé, Other, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Tentacle Sex, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-12-09 15:41:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20997242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: Bodhi Rook becomes a cargo pilot for the Rebellion. He's given the job of mentoring a young hothead called Poe Dameron.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think Bodhi joining the Rebels and getting prosthetics was originally [shima spoon's](https://twitter.com/shima_spoon) concept.
> 
> Please take heed of the warning tags. It’s not darkfic, but it’s dark. Dubious consent with regards to Bor Gullet.
> 
> My galactic lore is extremely patchy. Poe’s origin story is cherry-picked: let’s say Bodhi surviving Scarif had a butterfly effect. Anything that looks accurate is due to the hard work of my very patient consultant. The story starts around 25 ABY.
> 
> Edit made by fiertedubearn:  


‘New training assignment.’

She slings the datapad your way. You don’t give her a hard time about it. Not her fault.

You help the droids get the cargo unloaded. But you’ll only get underfoot. Leave them to it. They’re good at their jobs. Read the file.

Good looking kid. Familiar. Funny nose. Perfect test scores, glowing recommendations. But what’s in the report is just as important as what’s missing. You find the notes from the General, and there’s the giveaway: _potential._

So he’s not there, yet.

_Needs mentoring._ He’s trouble. If they’re assigning him to you, big trouble.

You get the ship refuelled and drop your report at headquarters. The General glances your way and you waggle the datapad in your hand, so she knows you’ve got it. Her eyebrows go up, like she’s already grateful you’re taking the job.

This kid is going to be a nightmare.

*

The base has a routine that’s not _your_ routine. Med bay for maintenance on the prosthetics. Mess hall for a meal, but you eat at one of the quiet tables where nobody looks up. Back to headquarters, to confirm the intel in the report. Spend the night in the bunks. The beds always smell like someone else. Jet-lagged pilots and shattered soldiers tossing and turning around you.

A tapping on your arm.

‘Hey,’ the voice cuts into your sleep. You turn so your good ear is off the pillow. ‘Wake up. We’re on Yavin.’

A whining noise. It’s coming from you.

‘Smell the air,’ the sleeper above you raises his voice so it’s clear. He knows you. Old trainee. ‘Gonna rain in the morning.’

‘Thanks,’ you murmur. He grumbles back an affirmation, already drifting off again. You roll over and stare at the idle light on a droid in the corner. Time your breathing up with the glow. Smells like rain.

*

Morning, it rains. Spend an hour checking inventory, get under the quartermaster’s feet. He’s used to it. Food enough for a siege. Munitions, plenty. Uniforms running low: the suppliers were raided by the First Order. Medical could be better: bacta never goes to waste. But the med bay’s stocked for injuries, not disease. If someone brings a virus back from the Outer Rim, they’re not ready. You make a note.

Ship’s almost ready to go. Cargo hold is empty, save two crates of spice you can trade for vaccines on the next run. Uniforms: that'll take inquiries, and then credits. Orange has gone out of fashion.

Less than an hour before you’re scheduled to leave. Engines are looking good. You tell a droid to stop polishing the undercarriage: better not to look too clean.

You get the droid to boost you up into the left exhaust port. Check that the rattling feeling is still just the old gasket. Not worth replacing yet: nothing’s going to fall off or explode. Besides, you like it. It rumbles when you’re not parked straight.

The droid taps on the outside of the port, so you stick your head out.

‘Hey,’ husky voice from the ground. ‘Have you seen a pilot…?’

You pull your goggles off your face. Good looking kid, familiar, funny nose.

‘You’re looking for me,’ you tell him.

He gives you a once-over, and clocks the uniform.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘We were supposed to meet at the…’

‘No point, we’ve met now,’ you start climbing out of the port. ‘Get on board.’

‘Now?’

‘We’re off-world in twenty minutes.’

The kid frowns. He’s got the eyebrows for it. Then he rushes off to whatever it takes him twenty minutes to do.

He’s jogging up the ramp in fifteen, with a duffel bag. You point him to the cabin, where he leaves the bag, then you gesture at the pilot’s seat.

‘Aren’t you a pilot?’ he asks.

‘Aren’t _you?’_

He blinks at you, then settles into the chair. You take a passenger seat. On ships like this, they’re just a little too far back, so you’re in the corner of his eye. He has to crane his neck to look at you while he primes the engines.

‘I’ve never flown a freighter,’ he confesses. He glances in your direction after flipping every switch, like the ship is going to explode.

‘First time for everything.’

You’ve seen his tests scores: even if you hadn’t, a jumpy pilot isn’t enough to crash a freighter. The kid was practically born in an X-Wing, so you know he’s used to flash little rockets that nosedive if you breathe the wrong way.

The left exhaust port starts to rattle, and he gives you an alarmed look. You shake your head: don’t worry about it.

‘Headset?’ he’s searching the dashboard.

‘Don’t have one,’ you explain. Headsets never sit comfortably on your bad ear, so you’ve modded the cockpit. ‘Mic button there.’

You point, and he startles when he notices it. So used to doing everything perfectly that one misstep feels like failure.

‘What’s our callsign?’ he asks.

‘Yellow twelve.’

‘Uh, control,’ he pushes the button. ‘This is yellow twelve, seeking clearance for takeoff…?’

The script is the same for combat and freighter ships. The comms squawk, and the tone sounds affirmative. The kid doesn’t check the transcript on the screen, just hits the thrusters. The sticky clutch takes on the second attempt, and he manages to guide you out of the hangar without scratching the paint. Once you’re out of orbit, you show him the autopilot settings and let him explore the freighter.

You never liked flying in the rain.

*

You’re searching databases for textile manufacturers when the kid reappears.

‘Hmm?’ you look up at him.

‘Oh,’ he realises you haven’t heard what he’d said. ‘I’m Poe. Poe Dameron.’

‘Yeah,’ you say. ‘It’s on your file.’

‘You’re Rook, right?’ he asks.

‘Yup.’

Plenty of worlds where people only have one name. You could be from one of them.

‘And you’re a cargo pilot?’ Poe prompts. You look around, until it becomes evident to Poe that this is indeed a cargo ship.

‘It’s just… cargo flying isn’t what I’m trained for,’ Poe explains.

‘Why would I be training you in something you’ve already been trained for?’ you ask.

He laughs, looking down and nodding. Realising he’s going to need a sense of humour on this assignment.

‘How long have you been in the Rebellion?’ he asks.

He’s learning. Specific questions. Doesn’t mean you’re going to give specific answers. ‘Years.’

‘I haven’t seen you around the base,’ he says. Not skeptical. Fishing.

‘You spend a lot of time in the warehouses?’ you ask.

‘No,’ he admits.

‘Me neither,’ you offer a forgiving smile. ‘Busy flying freighters.’

‘Right,’ Poe nods. ‘I mean, most of the old Rebels, they usually mention…’

‘What, that you’re Shara Bey’s boy?’

A few expressions on his face. Relief, now it’s out in the open. Pride, and every reason to have it. Trepidation, at having the same conversation however many times he’s met an old Rebel.

‘I’m sure you knew that already,’ you say, and he laughs again. ‘You’d roll your eyes if I said you look just like her.’

‘You knew her?’

Oh, another expression. Hope, like there’s any fragment of Shara he doesn’t have already, that you could offer him now.

‘Not well,’ you say, with kindness. ‘Busy flying freighters.’

‘Yeah,’ Poe nods, hiding his disappointment well. He comes to sit with you, looking at the list of factories. ‘So, what do I need to know?’

Too cocky to be a good student, but he’s got the curiosity to make up for it. You get him flagging worlds near your route that might be worth a visit. He plots them into the ship’s navigation without rushing it, or asking for help. You’re a decent pilot from years of practice: the only things you could teach him about flying would be shortcuts on the shipping routes.

Good thing you’re not going to teach him about flying.


	2. Chapter 2

The kid knows sabacc. You play together as the ship cruises on autopilot, still a week from your first destination. He makes some noises about betting with credits, but you know how low trainee wages are, and you don’t need his money. You play for nuts and bolts, just to get a sense of his style.

He’s competitive: no surprise. It’s a strength and a weakness in sabacc. He’s good at strategy, and smart enough to count cards, but he’s got no knack for bluffing.

You let him win a few rounds when he’s dealt a decent hand. Smug, but suspicious.

Let him lose a round to your bluff one day. He talks big, but he’s just as entertained by your trickery as he is by winning.

Then you let him lose a round with a hand that should have won. He sinks everything into it, so sure he can win, so sure you’re bluffing again. Forgets the difference between a _slim_ chance of losing, and _no_ chance of losing. Forgets he’s betting for nuts and bolts, and curses his cards when you reveal a winning hand. Skulks around the ship blowing off steam.

Kid cracks under pressure. Well, it happens to everyone, with enough pressure.

*

‘Where’d you learn to play?’ Poe asks, four days in. Hoping you know each other well enough for an answer.

‘My homeworld,’ you tell him, with a tone that says it’s all the answer he’s getting. ‘Wasn’t very good.’

It was a ruthless game in Jedha. They used to say you couldn’t bluff someone born on a bedrock of kyber. Half the beggars in the city were tourists who’d gambled away their tickets home.

‘I was lucky I had ten fingers when I left,’ you say. He glances at your right hand. _‘Had _ten.’

You wiggle the digits, and he tries not to stare.

‘Is it harder to fly?’ Poe asks. Another personal question, but a more relevant one.

‘Not a freighter,’ you say. ‘Couldn’t tell you for a small craft, but I doubt I’ve got worse.’

Poe’s face is getting dangerously close to pity. You reveal your cards and he groans, shoving his pile of nuts and bolts at you.

*

The first stop is barely more than a waypoint. A shanty town has sprung up around the port. There’s a market of local delicacies fried beyond recognition—which is for the best. You take Poe for his first meal in a week that hasn’t been frozen or reconstituted.

You recognise the blank looks of vendors. They see new faces every day. They know you’ll be gone within the hour, but they’ll be frying vermin tomorrow, in a year, in a decade. After all, _somebody _has to live here.

You don’t look at them when you buy your food. You can’t.

Poe watches you break apart your fork and dip the battered tentacle in sauce, before doing the same to his. The flash of mild panic on his face as he experiences the texture makes you chuckle.

‘So,’ he begins, bravely swallowing his first bite. ‘Did you always want to be a cargo pilot?’

‘Nobody _wants_ to be a cargo pilot,’ you say. He’s trying not to look relieved. ‘I wanted to fly a TIE fighter.’

‘Yeah,’ Poe agrees, a hungry look in his eyes. ‘The vestibulars must be incredible.’

He thinks you’re talking shop. You let him wax lyrical about the turning circles while you eat: he’ll learn in a moment that this kind of fare is a lot better hot.

*

The kid is good. There’s no denying it.

’There’s a loose gasket in the left exhaust,’ he tells you, getting out of the cockpit. ‘You can hear it when we take off.’

You blink at him, but he doesn’t realise his mistake. He probably thinks you’re ignoring him when he yells things from another part of the ship.

‘It’ll hold,’ you say, and go back to oiling your wrist.

‘Pity we don’t have an astromech,’ he says. Wistful.

‘The idea with cargo flying is we don’t get bits shot off all the time,’ you explain. ‘Or _any _of the time. So we don’t need a droid putting the bits back on.’

Poe shrugs. ‘You don’t like droids?’

‘I like droids,’ you hold up your wrist, rotating it. No clicks. ‘That’s why I don’t need one getting bits shot off it.’

Poe laughs. ‘You really weren’t cut out for combat flying, were you?’

‘Nope,’ you retort. ‘Good thing, too.’

‘For the droids?’

‘For the Rebellion.’

‘Why, ‘cause you were…’ Poe frowns. ‘Wait, why?’

‘Told you,’ you remind him. ‘I enlisted to fly TIE fighters.’

Poe’s eyes seem to get darker as he figures it out. You hold his gaze, so he knows you’re not joking.

‘Enlisted in the _Empire?’ _he asks.

You nod. No explanation, no excuse.

‘I mean, I know that there are…’ he backtracks, a little too late. ‘I’ve met. It’s just. When did you…?’

‘After the Death Star.’

It’s not a lie, exactly. Because you can’t remember the truth. Was it the day he caught your eye in the mess hall, on Eadu? Was it stuffing a datacard in your boot and setting your coordinates to home? When you stammered into the comms—what was it you said? Nothing happens in the right order, in your head. Not since. Well, that’s when.

He’d have been born around then. Probably nine months after, like a lot of the new generation.

After the Death Star. Let him think: a coward. A defector. Running from a losing battle.

It’s not a lie, exactly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for future chapters: tags have changed. There will be dubious-consentacles later on.


	3. Chapter 3

Not good at bluffing. You know. So, the kid’s boredom is a palpable change in the atmosphere. Takes up space. Like his hair.

But, smart. Knows he’s not being trained in how to fly a freighter, because he mastered that in two weeks.

Finally, when there’s something he sees as being _worth _doing, something _interesting, _you leave him on the ship.

Trading spice for vaccines. There’s places that are desperate enough for that. Places that could probably use more vaccines and less spice, but that’s not your decision.

You come back with a K0 droid. She’s half rusted, and walks slower than a spamel, but they threw her in with the deal.

You still have a soft spot for K designations.

‘Changed your mind about a droid on board?’ Poe asks, when you introduce her.

‘Clean her up and we’ll take her back to Yavin,’ you tell him. If there’s one thing fighter pilots know how to do, it’s clean droids.

‘Early retirement?’ Poe asks her.

‘I work in manufacturing,’ she informs him. ‘K0-5S.’

‘Suppliers making rebel uniforms got raided,’ you remind him. ‘So we ship in the raw materials. Get some droids to sew it together.’

‘We’re buying droids to make our uniforms for us?’ Poe asks.

‘Who do you think was making them before?’

Poe cleans her up. She gets called Vess.

*

The next stop, you come back with a child.

Poe doesn’t question that.

The boy sleeps in the workroom, with Vess. Neither of you get a word from him, although he seems to follow a few hand signs you picked up when you were doing regular runs in the Subterrel sector. He won’t take food from either of you, but if you leave a piece of bread like you forgot it, it goes missing.

You drop the boy off at a Hosnian city.

‘Is he gonna be safe if we leave him here?’ Poe asks. But he only asks once the boy’s gone, while a harbourmaster is off fetching his superior because you’re haggling over docking taxes.

‘We’re a Rebellion, not an orphanage,’ you remind him.

‘What if one of the syndicates takes him?’ Poe grimaces.

‘Heart of the Republic here,’ you explain. ‘Good police. Harder for a kid to fall through the cracks. Read that shipping manifest yet?’

Poe sighs. Getting better at the boredom.

‘Yeah, it’s…’ he holds it out. ‘Weird. Different weight listings on the same supplies.’

You take the manifest, and he points out the discrepancy. Sure enough, the seller’s tried to charge the higher flat rate.

‘Good work,’ you tell him. He practically glows.

*

‘What in the _hell?’_

Poe appears in the cockpit. His hair looks even more ridiculous than usual. He’s still half-asleep.

You ease off the dampener. The switch resists with enough force that it almost lifts you from your seat. Your fingers dance across the controls. Everything purring and slowing, even as the momentum makes your head swim.

From hyperspace to drifting in under a minute. You smile.

‘Why’d we stop?’ Poe asks.

‘Not just goods,’ you explain.

Only, no. That’s not an explanation. Try again. Talk while you get the receiver set up, set it recording, plug in the code cylinders. Muscle memory. Remember how to talk.

‘This is a hotspot. Messages on a lot of frequencies. Wherever it’s too busy, can’t pick it up. But out here. The shipping lanes. If you’re not in hyperspace. Everything pings.’

You show him the viewscreen. The readout shows a dozen encrypted transmissions.

‘That’s a cartel,’ you tap one, and then point to the corresponding cylinder. ‘Private corporations, don’t need those. Secret Senate channel. Bounty hunter’s guild.’

You recognise them by the patterns, but it’ll take a droid to decrypt the language.

_‘There _you are,’ you talk to the screen, as Poe approaches on your left side. Kid learns. ‘First Order comms.’

‘We’re listening to them?’ Poe asks.

‘Nobody else is,’ you say. ’Not out here.’

‘It’s that easy?’

‘So long as we don’t get hit by another freighter at lightspeed,’ you shrug.

‘How likely is that?’

‘Gets more likely the longer I’m distracted.’

Poe goes back to bed.

*

The closer you get to Yavin, the harder it is.

Bright eyed. Light on his feet. Flirts with Vess. Does a decent job whenever he’s given one. Can’t fault him. Just.

Talks. Always talking.

They’re always like this. Each assignment you take, you want to say: _this is the last one_.

You mean to file for it. No more of these young revolutionaries. They’re brimming with fire and hope and it crowds up the whole ship.

You were born in the cold. A cold moon. It’s in pieces, floating through space. All broken apart in your head. No gravity to hold it together. You saw it shatter, felt it shaking to bits under your feet. Your whole world fell apart and it had to be a nightmare. You pray you’re still in the nightmare. It can’t be true. Let it be a nightmare.

You’re the only one who remembers, and you can’t remember anything properly. Not since.

You push it away. Don’t let that be your last memory of Jedha.

What is it looking for? Truth. That time you believed in someone. Belief is so warm. Seeking warmth, light, heat. You had that, back then, but you cupped it like a flame that would snuff out in the wind. Kept it close: truth, a chance, a gamble you could win. His face.

It slithers and convulses, heaving toward you. Wrapping itself around you, searching for skin, holding you from wriggling free. Then it’s beneath your skin, in your thoughts. Searching. Hunting for him.

Don’t look at his face. Copper eyes, wispy brows, hard to read. Shouldn’t be playing sabacc in a bar like this. If you recognise him, he can recognise you. Broad shoulders, graceful, but look at the cards. _Look at the cards. _Who stands to lose more? Grunts like you play games in their downtime, but Imperial engineers are never off-base. Neither of you should be here.

He makes a joke about the weather. You laugh. The weather is always the same on Eadu.

‘It’s dry, on Jedha.’

He knows. He knows Jedha. He knows you are from Jedha.

Strange accent. You’ve never heard anything quite like it, and Jedha was full of pilgrims. You have to watch his mouth, to follow what he’s saying.

But that can’t be right. You weren’t deaf before the explosion.

You met him before.

He spoke from behind you. You understood. That time you came to the base shivering, caught in a storm. You dreaded cleaning up in the communal facilities. Not any warmer than rain, half the time. Engineers’ apartments had hot running water, he told you, in that heavy accent. And you wanted to. You wanted him.

He washed your hair, combing through it with broad hands. You leaned back. So tall that your head tucked under his chin. Warm, and wet, and it felt nothing like the storm.

_Don’t take this,_ you plead. Its limbs are slick and rubbery. The air is cold on Jedha. The mucus chills fast on your skin. Shivering.

Not tentacles. Hair. Clinging. Cloying.

Your hair is sweat-slicked on your face, and you rake it back. Tendrils sticking to your scalp, pulling, everything coming to the surface. _No. _It stings. It tugs. A snarl of hair tangled in the hinges of your knuckles. It’s taken your flesh, peeled everything away, laid out all your secrets like salted meat.

You had freckles on your right hand. They’re gone.

Gone twenty-five years, now. There’s no Mairan. You didn’t know that word, then, when it was happening. Later, they shone a light in your eyes and wondered if the explosion scrambled your brain.

Already scrambled.

You were on Yavin. It smelt like rain.

It was a Mairan, they told you. Ripped through your memories like it was overturning drawers, dumping everything on the floor. Some things stolen. Damaged. You never really get it back in order.

You pull out the knot of hair caught in your right hand. Scoop the rest away from your face, where it can’t tickle.

The kid is watching. Trying not to stare at the gnarled skin of your scalp, the knob of your right ear.

Funny nose. Poe. His face all twisted up in concern.

‘I’m alright,’ you say. Quavering.

‘We’ll be home soon,’ Poe tells you. Husky voice.

‘Back to your X-Wings?’ you grin.

He takes the teasing well. Talks, always talking. Lays back in his bunk and tells you all the trick flying he’s going to do once he’s off this jalopy. The fighter pilots race each other through the canyons on Yavin. They come back to base with shining eyes and flushed faces, crowing and shoving each other. He talks about them, his buddies, the guys who are gonna save the world. _We’re gonna save the world_.

He talks, and you sleep, once more before home.

Maybe you’ll take one more assignment after this one.


	4. Chapter 4

The next trip, he knows how it works. Pulls up the nav instead of asking where you’re going. Reads the manifest instead of asking what you’re hauling.

Tells you he cleaned out a few of his buddies playing sabacc. One of the squad leaders saw, and asked if he’d been traveling with Rook.

Be gracious. It’s a compliment. They talk about you when you’re not there.

Kid has a crooked smile. Roguish, it probably gets called.

The squad leader didn’t tell him everything. Good. Easier that way.

The hold is stocked with surplus rations. No need to check on it, but you check. Advice for the trainee: never travel with an empty hold when you can fill it.

Counter-advice: never fill your hold with something you can’t afford to lose.

They talk about you when you’re not there.

*

The first stop, you let the kid do some trick flying. There are sanctions on this planet. No imports without official clearance. From the ground, it’s a simple proposition: the First Order, or starvation.

Slide the freighter into the upper atmosphere, near one of the poles. Attach chutes to the crates. Strap on a mask. Open the cargo bay doors. Crack a flare. Pray it works, because you’re both human. Only the planet’s locals can see phosphor in that spectrum. Invisible to the First Order, invisible to you. Get the kid to duck the tail of the ship, unstrap the crates and send them tumbling into the sky. Close the bay doors once the chutes have popped open.

That will feed a thousand for a month. Inside one crate is a gift: an orange flag. Maybe they’ll fly it, when they take back the equatorials.

Maybe they’ll burn it, when they realise that the same rations could feed a hundred for a year.

Kid’s too happy to think about that, rolling the freighter as it pops out of orbit. He laughs over the grinding complaints of the ship, but he coaxes it back into hyperspace just fine.

*

The next leg of the run is for tech. The port is in the heart of a new city, a boomtown sprung up around the comms industry. Slick new buildings on cheap foundations. This place will be a ghost town in ten years. Right now, they’ll charge you credits just to lean on a wall.

Another good trick of Poe’s: he’s charming. He sweet-talks a salesman into a wholesaler’s price on the pickup. You barely break even on the deal, with the price of drinks bought to seal the deal. But he’s learning. How to be both attractive and forgettable. Never to sign a contract when a handshake will do the job. To get off-world before anyone’s superiors turn up asking where the invoices are.

‘You’re not really teaching me to fly, are you?’ Poe asks, spread out in the cockpit like he’s king of the galaxy.

‘Ease off the throttle,’ you warn him. ‘Or you’ll blow my gasket.’

*

They like to drop in on your blind spot. They’re bastards that way.

Poe swears a blue streak when the comms start blaring the hail.

You make a throat-cut gesture, heading to the cockpit and pressing the mic. You keep your voice flat. Compliant, but exasperated. This is going to be as dull for them as it is for you.

You take a look at the kid. He’s already jumpy. Glancing at his pack like he’s going to strap on a blaster.

His hair is still ridiculous. You rummage around the cabin for the cap you usually wear during inspections, and jam it on his head.

‘Act normal?’ he asks, scowling.

_’Normal _for you is a cocky Rebel prick,’ you remind him. ‘Act like you just woke up.’

Four stormtroopers come aboard. Four is good. Six is a heavy force, that needs to justify itself by getting rough with everyone. Two can convince themselves they’re underdogs, and get trigger happy. Four is just four.

They poke through the hold and find the tech you picked up. One of them reads the fake manifest you keep on the datapads.

‘This is cutting-edge stuff,’ one of them says. Hard to make it out behind the mask, but the gist is simple.

’Latest order for Blaze Corp,’ you rattle off a lie. ‘They’re launching a new network. Simulcasting holovids…?’

You sound confused, like it’s all above your pay grade.

‘Could be used for spying,’ another trooper says.

‘If they want,’ you shrug. ‘Data is money, right?’

Poe’s eyes are drilling a hole in the back of your head. Probably realising how much of your life you’ve spent chatting with stormtroopers. How your accent shifts, just a bit, into the bland but self-important register all Imperials pick up.

‘What’s with the hand?’

‘Corellian raiders,’ you grimace. ‘Ten years ago. Took a fresh shipment of droids. Corporate insurance didn’t cover synthflesh.’

She laughs like it’s funny. She’s bored out of her mind: you’re the first person she’s talked to all day that she doesn’t have to share a 'fresher with.

‘Alright,’ declares another. ‘Looks good. We’ll watch out for the holovids.’

They won’t. They just want to sound like they’ve warned you, so they haven’t completely wasted their time here.

Poe doesn’t exhale until their hyperspace trail has faded into the darkness. He tosses your cap back in the cabin, whistling through his teeth.

‘Get used to it,’ you order him.

*

Takes a few days for his hot blood to boil over. You refuel at a mid-size dock in a crowded system, where fuel prices are competitively low. Places like this, First Order recruitment signs are on every surface. You lose count of them as you walk downtown for a meal. He’s bristling, brows knitted together, teeth grinding.

‘Look at this shit,’ he snarls, when one starts blaring music as you pass it. ‘Do people really fall for this?’

You grab him by the scruff of his neck with your right hand, steering him into an alley. He stumbles in shock.

‘You want to do this now?’ you hiss. You’re shorter than he is, but you use that to duck into his space. ‘Here?’

He’s gaping at how you’ve manhandled him, backing up against the wall.

‘Go on, then,’ you say.

The kid always bristles when he’s challenged. He takes the bait.

‘I just _don’t get it,’ _the undertone of rage in his voice isn’t an undertone anymore. ‘I don’t _want _to be the kind of person that gets it, either! How someone gets that far from their principles that they’d even _consider _it.’

Your heart is pounding in your ears. You could chew the kid out, remind him he was born in a haven, never hungry, taught to fly by people who loved him. But there’s a better way to do this.

‘You know I enlisted.’

‘Yeah, and you _defected,’ _he says. ‘So you should know, better than anyone—’

‘Yeah, I do,’ you snap. ’So I’m gonna ask you a question. And you’re not gonna answer, because I don’t want to hear it. You’re just gonna chew on it, and when you’re done, you’re gonna swallow this self-righteous shit and _shut up.’_

His eyes go wide. Nobody’s spoken to Shara Bey’s boy like that in too long.

You look him in the eye. ‘If they were the only ones who could teach you to fly, would you do it?’

He opens his mouth to lie, but you’re already back on the main street. The Imperial tune starts up again as you pass.

*

He doesn’t say he’s sorry, when you’re back on the freighter. He sleeps badly—you know because you do, too—and the next morning, the anger has burned out. His eyes have shadows under them.

He stands in the cockpit, fingertips hooked into the upper consoles to look out at the stars. He takes a heavy breath, weight sinking down, and just watches. The engine rumbles beneath you.

He looks in your direction, and it’s like there’s still a bit of starlight in his face. Maybe it’s the sheen of tears in his eyes, making them brighter.

There’s your answer.

*

‘So were you hauling droids?’

Right. Someone else in the ship. Trainee. One day he’ll learn to make sure you’re looking at him before asking questions. Or he won’t. It would take patience.

‘What?’

‘Were you hauling droids?’ Poe gestures at his right arm. But he’s talking about yours. ‘For the Empire?’

‘No,’ you put your datapad aside. ‘And before you ask, it wasn’t Corellians.’

Let him speculate. Reach an assumption. The worst thing it can be is the truth.

‘More reports?’ he angles his head, skimming the datapad.

Nod. ‘Written yours?’

He shrugs. Like he’s got something better to do on a long-haul. ’Flew. Landed. Flew. Stars. Wish you were here.’

‘Look at mine.’

He takes the datapad, and scrolls through reams of text. Whistles through his teeth.

‘Does anyone _read _all this?’

He’s trying to sound nice about it. Like you write them because you’re lonely. _Wish you were here._

‘When they need to,’ you explain. ‘The last port will be an Imperial stronghold by next year, so it’s off the list for refuels. The place before was doing exit gate shakedowns. A pilot who reads this report knows the name of our contact in the Hutts. The pilot who doesn’t read this report gets his ears cut off.’

Before Poe can say he gets the idea, you throw the information up on the cockpit screen. ‘Fake manifest, real manifest. No package at the Hosnian dead drop, so the sleeper is probably dead. Date and coordinates of our last Imperial inspection, personnel, tone.’

You’re showing off. He raises an eyebrow at it. Raise one back.

’When do you start showing me the dead drops?’ he grins.

‘When you start writing reports more than eight words long,’ you try to sound stern.

‘Okay,’ he holds his hands up, but there’s a gleam in his eye. He wants to be a spy. ‘Then I’m on it.’

You’re never lonely. You wonder what it’s like.

*

‘Hey,’ he squeezes your arm. ‘Are you cold?’

Roll in the bed, swat him away. Not cold on the ship.

But it is. It’s cold, and he’s cold too. His hand is clammy on the tender inside of your elbow. Textured. Slippery.

‘Tell me about the Empire?’

Tone is all wrong. Not the way he spat _Empire_ before. Not the cautious inquiry about your experience with them.

‘You only enlisted to bring them down, right?’

Bargaining. Wanting to see the best in you. Oh, it hurts. Hurts your chest, hurts your skin.

Look down. Look. His hand is wrapped around your arm, curling in too many loops. Too tight. How is it so tight? Constricting. It’s going to snap the bones in your right arm.

You don’t have a right am.

Not him. That’s why it’s circling around you, probing closer to your skull, your ribs.

You can’t bluff someone born on a bedrock of kyber. Speak. Before it chokes you. ‘Bor Gullet.’

Some worlds, saying a monster's name steals its power. Others, it summons the monster to you. Well, it’s not like the thing can get any closer than it already is.

It laughs. Husky. Still sounds like him.

‘What did you give up?’ it asks. But the voice is off, cruel, not like the trainee.

It wants you to admit it. How time isn’t time in your head anymore. How it can always find you, then and now and forever. It can turn the past into the present again. So it lingers there, in the future, too.

The easiest way out is through.

‘Nothing I couldn’t afford to lose,’ you grit out, and with each word the chill slides away, your skin drying, and the future, twenty-five years of it, comes stumbling back.

‘Hnnh?’ the real Poe asks, from the bunk above. His voice is rough with sleep. Nasal. You never noticed that before. So the thing in your head wasn’t nasal. Wasn’t real.

‘You’re okay,’ Poe mumbles. A thump on the ceiling as he taps the divider between you reassuringly. ‘We’re good.’

Rambling, himself. You’ve woken him.

You hadn’t thought about him in your bed. Or you had, somewhere in the back of your mind, where the creature has rifled through your subconscious and discovered, exposed, spoiled.

‘Just you and me here, buddy,’ Poe says, with an expansive sigh that suggests he’s going right back to sleep.

Warm on the ship. Warmer, now. Maybe you had thought about it. Maybe you could think about it, some other time.


	5. Chapter 5

It takes a few long hauls before he gets good at writing reports. Even with the steam he blows off on layovers in Yavin, Poe runs too hot. He itches for dogfights. Itches are contagious. He gets under your skin.

Anyway, the base needs munitions. Yavin’s running low after an Outer Rim battle that Poe’s furious he missed.

No respectable arms dealer will sell munitions to Rebels during the disarmament. It’s not a problem. Most arms dealers aren’t respectable.

Black markets look slick, on the surface. Clean, flush with money. Not a hair out of place.

You can’t help grinning when the kid clicks. A spring in his step. Fire in his eyes. Set to his jaw. He walks a little closer to you, a little faster. Every nerve humming: _finally, finally, finally._

Be honest with yourself. You’re looking forward to it, too.

The first part is always small talk. The heavies at the door are new, but you walk through fast enough that they don’t stop you, even with the kid ogling everything. He follows quick at your heel, though, mimicking the purpose in your walk. The crowd doesn’t quite part, but you’re both pilots: you know how to weave between obstacles like the path was always there.

The boss in this port is a middle-aged Besalisk with hands like shovels. Eight shovels. She brushes her knuckles down your cheek, on the left side—the prettier side. Poe, she grabs by the biceps and ruffles his hair like a grandson. Then an invitation to the table. Seats still warm from Crimson Dawn delegates who’ve just outstayed their welcome.

She chats for two hours: about family, about overheads, about the dumpling place you _must _try before you leave. It’s all part of the ritual. It’s no effort to laugh at her jokes. She’s funny. But you drink slowly, and keep one eye on the kid. He gets a little twitch when she turns to him and says: ‘You got brothers and sisters?’

He’s barely answered _no _before she launches into her own story about two sisters giving her hell about conclaves. She’s not digging for information: she doesn’t need to. She knows you, at least as _Rook, _knows you’ve got Rebel sympathies if not a full-blooded Rebel. She’s got enough fingers to have one in every pie, and she’s too smart to let _you_ know how much _she_ knows.

You like her. You like this world. The slippery deals and the secrets. She mentions a rumour about a Senator with Consortium connection. Act disinterested. Don’t check that the kid is following along. Just hope he is.

Once she’s decided you know enough, and the pleasure of your company is an adequate sweetener for the sale of a few thousand proton bombs, it’s all-encompassing hugs and promises not to be away so long next time.

‘There’s a hunter on the binspo table,’ she mutters, before letting you go. ‘Doing well for himself.’

A tilt of your head. Consider it dealt with.

Saunter back into the crowded cantina floor. You stop, lean back against his chest, head tipped toward his. Not so close as anyone else will notice, but enough to get his attention.

‘Get a drink,’ you suggest. ‘Make friends with someone.’

‘Anyone in particular?’ he murmurs. Try not to laugh at his attempt at cloak-and-dagger.

’Whatever you’re into,’ you suggest. Then you feel him go warm, his body pressed along the back of yours. ‘It’s not a mission. Meet me for dumplings in the morning.’

_‘Oh,’ _he breathes. Next to your ear. He’s learning. ‘Yeah. Okay. Yeah.’

Linger for a bit as Poe makes his way to the bar, sidling next to a Clawdite and offering him a drink.

Kid makes friends easy. Not a bad talent to have. Leave him to it.

The tables have nothing in common with shimmering, vapid places like Canto Bight. Here, the floor is never sticky, but it’s _never sticky _because they pay the cleaners good money to get the blood out.

Binspo was never your game. Doesn’t mean you’re not good at it. But it’s easy to get caught up in old mistakes. The bounty hunter is making them. He’s on a lucky streak.

No such thing as a lucky streak.

Play a few rounds, win a little. Lose a bit more. Be pedantic. Confident in the game, not in the other players. Like you don’t realise how this hunter thinks. Like you’re just there to make some money. After all, it’s true.

A good hand comes. All in. He doesn’t want to break his streak. Takes a risk. He can’t lose now, not to the pedantic guy who’s made safe bets for the past hour. All his other risks paid off.

It’s just a fallacy, in the end. Take your winnings before he’s over the shock. Tip the bartenders. Show the money to a few guards for admission to the backrooms.

This is where they play _real _cards.

One or two people at the table know you. Or at least, they know you’re a card player, and smuggler. These things are not untrue.

You don’t need money. The Rebellion has funds. You can play just to stay in the game, to hear the news passed between rounds. Any player with the connections to get back here knows that’s the real trade in this port: secrets. Buy a few, trade others, while cards move around the table just to keep everyone’s hands busy.

You don’t need money. But winning? That’s the closest thing to the cockpit of a TIE Fighter. It gets your blood up, your heart beating faster and your eyes more focused. It anchors you here and now, so the only past are the cards that have been dealt, the only future is the next hand, and the thing in your head with sightless eyes and roiling limbs can’t make sense of this game. Hiding that thrill is another rule of the game: be a one-armed freighter pilot pushing fifty. Shift the angle of your jaw so the burns on your neck can look like either a weakness or a threat.

Things that are not untrue.

*

The dumplings are good. Order a bit of everything, since your pockets are heavy from last night. Try a few, sip weak tea, draft notes for your next report.

Poe turns up, still rumpled from his night with the Clawdite. Sits down and stuffs a dumpling in his mouth. Groans with pleasure.

‘Big night?’

‘Mmmmmf,’ he affirms, still chewing. ‘Never slept with a Clawdite before. Did you know they can—‘

‘—yes. They very much can.’

His face goes through stages: surprised, impressed, then a moment where he catches himself for having been surprised in the first place.

‘Got plenty for the report,’ he tells you, pouring himself some tea.

‘Those parts don’t need to go in reports,’ shake your head, smiling.

‘No, I mean intel,’ he laughs. ’We did talk. First Order have promised to double the bounties on the Outer Rim siege-breakers.’

‘That _is _good intel,’ you tell him.

Kid is glowing like a sun. ‘I’m a natural honeypot.’

‘I only told you to make friends,’ you remind him. ‘You were getting pent-up.’

‘Oh, I was gonna _blow?’_ Poe grins.

‘Eat your breakfast.’

After the fourth dumpling, he asks: ‘What about you? Did you make any_ friends?’_

‘I was playing cards.’

‘Not getting too old for it, are you?’

His eyes drag over you. Slow, obvious.

‘You’ll be lucky if you get this old,’ you retort. Make a joke of it. Even if he is still looking, like now he’s noticed. Considering.

‘Not if I get that grey,’ he quips.

Kick him under the table with the metal foot, so he learns his lesson. He laughs, jostling you back. Bites into his dumpling. Eyes dark, unhesitant.

‘I’m kidding,’ he says, but the way he rolls his lip between his teeth does nothing to defuse the building tension. ‘The grey looks good.’

Drink your tea. He watches how you swallow. Chokes on his.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with tentacle sex (what a fun thing to announce!). If that's not your thing, it happens right at the end of the chapter, so you can stop once Galen appears.

Each trip back to base, you wonder if that will be the time. He starts sitting with you at the canteen, sometimes, even though it’s his only chance to eat with other people before shipping out again. He’s noticed you talk less among the Rebels, that you can hear barely anything over the chatter. Learns to sit, be quiet, watch the crowds shift and flow like he would on a mission.

The rest of the day, you’re lurking around command. You monitor transport and logistics: regardless of your security clearance, it’s easy to read what’s going on in the movement of supplies and personnel. Check in on your old trainees, follow up on their intel. You flag some inquiries for yourself, if they fall close to the next shipping route. Put in a request to dispatch agents on follow-up missions.

This is why they give you the trainees with noses for trouble. You’re good at sniffing it out.

You never go to debriefs. Don’t want anyone thinking you’re obliged to. Anything important goes in the write-up, and anything more important than that, someone will come find you in the hangar. A short conversation about whether you’re paranoid, or have good instincts. Usually the latter.

Poe’s been off with his pilot friends, for most of these conversations. It’s good to be in the heart of things, even if you can’t stand it for too long. To see that it matters.

It’s sheer luck that nobody’s told him your first name. That he hasn’t thought to check. So Yavin is good, for a while.

No such thing as a lucky streak.

*

On the freighter, he starts to feel as normal as a shadow. You move around like partners in a dance.

At some point you became _buddy_, instead of _Rook_. You like it. He’s still _kid,_ but all your trainees are _kid_. He’s the type you’ll still be calling _kid_ when he’s a Commander—and with talent like his, that won’t be long.

There were two moons in the Terrabe sector. They were caught in each other’s orbit, spinning closer with every year around the sun. In three million years, they’re going to collide, and they’re going to shatter.

It feels like that kind of dance. There are worse things.

He telegraphs his movements in the cockpit, when you can’t see his face. Wakes you when you’re stuck in a dream, hanging upside-down from his bunk to reach you. Sometimes he leaves an arm dangling down, and you hold onto it until you’re asleep again. He starts brushing past you in the cabin after he’s done in the ‘fresher. He was never modest—neither are you, you’ve been a soldier—but he starts to angle himself differently. Drawing attention to a broad chest, covered in dark curls. Your type. His type must be skinny, greying, missing two limbs and burned down one side like a steak someone forgot to flip.

An orbit, circling closer. It might take three million years. It might not.

*

It never quite captures the cadence of Poe. So it takes its favourite form.

‘Does it feel strange, to be my age?’

Raise an eyebrow. Galen hasn’t aged a day: you saw him the day he died. He is always rain-drenched, in your mind. He was solid: you still remember the weight of him on top of you, or draped sleeping beside you. But his form changes, blurring at the edges, slippery and liable to become tentacles if you don’t watch closely. Only able to focus on certain details: strange planes of his cheekbones, carved mouth, strong shoulders. Nostrils flaring while he considers, before speaking.

‘Do you think I’d have chosen you, if you were not from Jedha?’

‘No,’ you are honest. Lying makes it worse. ‘But I was, and you did.’

‘Would I have seduced you, if I hadn’t needed you?’

Get ahead of its questioning. A counter-shot. ‘Would I have done what you needed, if I hadn’t been in love with you?’

‘But you were,’ it smiles. ‘And you did.’

If. The monster loves to play _if_ games. Offer up versions of the past: you stayed in the Empire, you refused to take the message, you died on Scarif. Or, alternatives, fictions it illustrates in such vivid detail you could live inside them forever: you save him. You save everyone. You save the world.

It can alter the odds, so you can try for a different outcome. Bet, bluff, fold. This game is fixed: dealer always wins.

Once, early in your flying days. A meteor field. It’s harder to dodge them in a freighter. And no ace pilot can dodge a pebble, hurtling through the dark. The chances something so small hitting a ship, in the vastness of space, are low. Unlikely, but never impossible. It hit your window with a visceral crunch. You heard yourself gasp. Can’t gasp in a vacuum. The glass was thick. The pebble was lodged in the heart of a growing web of faultlines. You never saw them move, but a new line appeared each second, between blinks. Shards of glass, held together by luck, the smallest pieces clustered around the rock. Cracking sounds that made you flinch, over and over. Groaning as they crept out to the rim of the screen. Your heart fluttered in your throat as you prayed for enough time to reach the escape pod. That the escape pod was functioning. You never forgot, after that: how fragile a barrier between flight and annihilation. That cold panic.

Space is cold. It takes ten seconds before your lungs explode, but your eyeballs will freeze in the instant of the breach. Ten seconds feels like a long time to die.

That’s how time works. The past, a flat clear plane of it, in pieces, splintering. Held together by chance, the cracks spreading. This creature, the pebble. The centre point, shattering everything that you were, promising to suck you in the void. But you’re alive, sifting through the pieces, getting cut on the sharp edges. Time isn’t a line. It’s a web. Some pieces of the past are true. Others are fictions, part of the game. Nothing fits back together. The past and the present and the future and all the things that never happened. Only one fixed point. This thing.

‘How long would it take?’ it has Galen’s accent, but an odd angle to its neck. Too curious. ‘Redemption?’

‘Not sure it works like that,’ shake your head. It’s shuffling through your memories, until you can’t pin down which ones are true.

‘Hmm,’ it smirks at you, a crinkle around Galen’s eyes. ‘Were we lovers? Or did you imagine it?’

A viscous tendril slinking up your thigh.

‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ you don’t resist. ‘Nobody else to remember.’

‘And you cannot,’ it muses. ‘Not without me.’

A slip. Referring to the creature in the first person. Keep playing: the soft, tickling curl of its touch. Shiver.

‘There isn’t a me without you,’ be truthful. Offer the truth, receive it. Time making more sense in a line, as it starts to twine itself around you.

‘I want you to do something for me.’

Those were Galen’s words. Spoken to you in the dark. You nodded, your nose pressed to his collarbone. His arms around you.

Its arms are around you now, one stroking your cheek, one propping the back of your neck, another pressing your chest. Still wearing Galen’s skin, but holding you in too many places. Too dark to see where Galen ends and the creature begins.

This is its favourite part. The truth.

‘It will be dangerous.’

He didn’t make excuses, or assure your safety. He didn’t apologise for asking this of you. You had a leg around his waist, a hand around his cock.

‘I’ll do it,’ you said.

‘Promise me,’ his voice shook, with hope, and worry, and pleasure.

‘I promise,’ you whispered it into his mouth, between kisses.

It’s subsumed you now, a slick and writhing mass. The tapered point of a tentacle moves from your temple to your lips, seeking entrance, chasing the promise. Another slithers beneath you, stroking, prying. Like it can reach right through you. Once it’s inside, the sensation surges and sparks, raw pleasure flooding your nerves. Let it draw you in. Drag you under, in the cool, in the quiet.

The fire should have killed you. It’s a tangle of memories circling and repeating: saying Galen’s name one more time. When the grenade rattled across the floor, that same panic you felt when the pebble hit the glass. The world exploding, so soon after Jedha shattered beneath your feet. Everything around you seems to be broken. Then darkness, cold, silence. Let it hold you. It will keep you safe.

You woke up to the smell of rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _oh my god though are we all **hype as shit** over the trailer?_


	7. Chapter 7

Everything in a rebellion is a risk. That’s why they call it a rebellion.

That’s what you tell yourself when Poe goes missing.

He misses the rendezvous, the morning after a night at the card tables. Another weapons deal, the seventh you’ve negotiated together. Almost a year working side by side, no incidents. But there’s no such thing as a lucky streak.

Retrace his steps. You spent the evening in a cantina, where mercs pick up jobs. A pair of smugglers don’t stand out. You chased a lead with a contact who knows you through the cartels, leaving Poe to drink and eavesdrop. Maybe he drank too much.

The street behind the cantina is empty, save for a droid cleaning the windows of a workshop. Good. Move quickly, pinch the restraining bolt and jiggle it loose. Ask her, while she’s still disoriented. A couple of heavies dragging a human in a jacket out that door, around dawn. Probably took him to one of the spice warehouses. She starts to realise what you’ve done.

‘Don’t switch it back,’ she demands.

‘Here,’ you fiddle with it until the bolt is disconnected, but jammed in the socket. A permanent fix. Invisible. ‘Don’t let on until you’re ready.’

She thanks you in binary. There’s not many ways to bribe a droid. Lucky.

The warehouse isn’t hard to find. They’re not trying to cover their tracks, so the kid is probably alive.

Open the door slowly. Cautious. A hand grabs you and yanks you inside. Stumble, don’t yelp. Three bounty hunters. A smaller team gets a bigger take. Smart, if you’re not outmatched. If you’re preying on a pair of freelance smugglers, one of them obviously green, the other obviously soft on the green one.

The green one is tied to a chair, mouth gagged, radiating fury. Bruised, but intact. A masked hunter stands behind him; while the one who grabbed you is patting you down for weapons. The third approaches you. It’s in his stance: this one is the boss.

‘Last night,’ growls the boss. ‘You bought two hundred blasters off a Hutt dealer.’

‘Top of the line,’ you agree. Sound neutral, still. Like you might cave.

‘Not cheap, under the disarmament.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ you agree.

The masked one barks out something: the words are garbled, but the tone is clear. No more stalling.

‘How much is it worth to you?’ the boss asks. ‘More than your partner?’

Sigh. Like you’re weighing up the equation.

Mask punches Poe, to show they mean business. Poe snarls, struggling in the restraints.

They’re amateurs. Amateurs hit harder. Definitely no House affiliation. Nobody to keep them to the creed. Killing both the smugglers once they’ve secured the blasters is easier. Smarter. You and Poe will be slaughtered the moment you turn your backs.

‘The blasters will net you, what, ten thousand?’ you ask. ‘Good money on the hunter market.’

Look in Poe’s eyes. Still clear. The third hunter is still in the corner of your eye, blocking the door.

‘I’ve got a better offer for you.’

‘This is not a negotiation,’ the boss gets up in your face. ‘Break his arm.’

Poe yells behind the gag. The masked hunter holsters his gun, grabbing Poe’s forearm. He lifts Poe half-out of the chair, twisting him. Poe is wriggling, but Mask is stronger. That arm is going to break.

‘Forty thousand credits!’ you throw down your ace.

The leader holds up a hand. Poe thumps back into the chair. ‘You don’t have forty thousand.’

_‘I_ don’t,’ you say. ‘The First Order does.’

‘What’s the First Order got to do with this? Who the hell are you?’

The boss is curious. Mask is talking, but you can’t tell what he’s saying. He’s still holding Poe’s arm.

‘Bodhi Rook,’ you tell him. ‘Look up who the hell I am.’

The boss gestures at Mask, and Mask stalks over to a desk. There’s a datapad and a holo projector there.

Don’t look at Poe’s face. There isn’t time. Watch the moment the old holo flashes to life.

That moment, when the hunters can’t believe their luck. Now.

Lash out with your right hand. Grab the boss’ face, a finger in each eye socket.

Not that anyone thinks to ask, but a K-class droid can crush a man’s skull with one hand.

Not that anyone thinks to ask, but most Rebel prosthetics are salvaged from K-class droids.

Grab the blaster out of the boss’ holster. Shoot the guard at the door, while Mask is fumbling with the holo. Shoot Mask.

The holo clatters to the ground. Your face, twenty-five years younger. The outstanding bounty that the Empire never cancelled.

Poe’s breathing hard, eyes wild. Rip the gag off his face.

‘What the _hell_ just happened?’

He’s staring at the crumpled heap of the boss. The spreading pool of blood around his caved-in head.

Take the keys off Mask’s body. Unlock Poe’s cuffs.

‘Where’d they hit you?’

‘Uhh,’ Poe stares at you, rubbing his wrists. You crouch next to Mask, wiping your right hand on his shirt.

‘Head? Knees?’

‘Yeah,’ Poe mumbles. ‘Stomach. Nothing broken.’

Shut down the holo. Crush it, just in case someone thinks to check its search history.

‘We’ll check on the ship,’ you tell him. Offer him your left hand. He surges to his feet, colliding with you. His mouth crashes into yours. Painful and breathless and blessedly, wonderfully alive. Kiss him, pull him close, checking he wasn’t lying when he said nothing was broken. And then, just hold him. Just kiss his stupid grin, feel the scrape of stubble and the firm hands pulling you together.

‘You’re _Bodhi Rook?’_ he asks, giddy with disbelief. ‘The Rogue One pilot, Bodhi Rook...?’

Pull a face. ‘Don’t say you kissed me because of that.’

‘No, no, I just...’ he laughs, shaking his head. ‘Wanted to.’

‘Good. Lean on me.’

Hitch his arm around you, take some of his weight as you walk. Poe grunts.

‘Did you just wreck that guy’s _face?!’_

Sigh. ‘They’d have killed us both.’

‘Well _yeah,_ but that was...’ he swallows. ‘Really effective.’

It’s a slow shuffle across the docks to the ship. The maintenance droid is nowhere to be seen. The workshop window is half-washed.

‘Hey,’ Poe asks, limping beside you. ‘How did you hear the guy with the mask?’

‘Badly.’

‘Huh.’

Take him home. Sit him in the cabin, and clean the dead guy off your hands. Order him to stay put while you get the ship off-world and into hyperspace as fast as you can. Set it to autopilot. Breathe.

Scan him for breaks, check he’s not concussed. Patch up anything that’s bleeding. Give him a shot to ease the bruising, and one for the pain. All the while, touching him. You try to stay methodical, to let the adrenaline burn off. But he reaches for you at every opportunity, and he doesn’t put his shirt back on when you’re done. When he stands up, he’s crowding you against the wall. He frames your face in his hands. Waits, until you look him in the eye. See how long he’s meant this. How much. There’s still starlight stuck there.

Kiss him again, properly this time, not just because he’s alive but because you want to. You _have _wanted to.

Your hands find his bare waist, the hard line of his hips. Only the left registers the searing heat, but he leans into the right. Pushing for a show of strength, to see if you can hold him in place. Squeeze the hipbone. He shudders, grins beside your mouth. Sweeps your hair back to nuzzle your left ear. To make good use of the tender skin there, lips and teeth tickling. You squirm, your breath catching. He bites and you surge forward, your thigh driving between his. He groans, pulling you closer, half-steering and half-carrying you to the bunk.

He lays you down like a prize. Ridiculous, really, you want to ask: _have you seen yourself? _But he has, you know, since confidence rolls off him in waves as he finishes undressing and arches over you.

Metal fingers tuck a curl behind his ear, and he leans into the touch like you can feel it. Like you didn’t kill someone an hour ago. Turn your face to one side, the good side, as he starts unzipping your jumpsuit. Try not to squirm, fail. He’s seen it, remember. He knows how much is left of you. And still he wants, his eyes dark, the hard line of his cock pressing your thigh.

‘Hey,’ he says, a gravelly note in his voice, waiting for you to look at him before he continues.

It’s a question. Answer. ‘Yeah,’ you nod. Hold onto his upper arm, feel the solid strength of it as he peels you out of your clothes. Slow, purposeful. Finding the sensitive parts. Rough fingers, wet tongue. A growl you feel more than hear, as his mouth locks onto your nipple, one then the other.

Touch him, feel the bunched muscle in his back, those shoulders. Card through his hair, scratch his scalp and feel him shove back for more.

He removes the jumpsuit and underclothes, tossing them out the side of the bunk. Then he finishes the path he was mouthing from your waist to your hips, until you’re grabbing his hair again and urging him to stop teasing. He smiles, the curve of his cheek on your thigh. Tug. Make him hiss. For your effort, a heavy drag of tongue along your cock, a clumsy kiss that smothers the head of it. Try not to buck into his mouth, even as he groans and hums, not audible but tangible, buzzing in your nerves. A hand curling around the base to steady you, stroking in tandem with the slide of his tongue. Glance down, see how he watches you through his lashes, how he grinds into the mattress, chasing his own pleasure as he sucks you off.

A finger, tentative at first. Tickling, until you tilt your hips up, spread your thighs. Then pressure, making you gasp. A spark of arousal as it circles your rim: whine, lean into it so he knows what you want. He nudges inside, just barely, and you arch for more, _more. _

But Poe is busy showing off his lack of gag reflex. His smugness is palpable, infuriating, irresistible.

Give him a distraction. Fumble in the caddy in the side of the bunk until you find it. Tap him on the head with the bottle until he realises what it’s for.

_‘Oh,’_ he pulls off you, and, tragically, removes his finger. ‘Want me to…?’

‘Only if you—‘

‘_Yes_,’ he’s already slicking his fingers. ‘Yeah, I want to.’

Pull him into a rough kiss. Brace your right leg against the wall of the bunk at an inhuman—but convenient—angle. He frowns at the contortion, then laughs. The first finger slides in easily. You jerk your chin, a _come on _gesture, until he gives you two. He tilts his head, squinting at you. ‘_Huh_.’

Shrug. All pilots are resourceful when it comes to privacy. He knows this.

He twists his fingers, stretching. You cup the back of his neck so he’s close, breathing the same air. He’s already bright with sweat—it’s warm on the ship—and the small space traps the rich smell of him. His fingers crook inside you and you jolt, your arm clanging against the wall of the bunk. Both of you laugh: you’re cringing, while he blinks in surprise at the echoing noise. This time, when he moves his fingers again, you’re ready, your hips canting up to meet his hand.

‘Three?’ he offers.

‘Just fuck me,’ you tell him.

He huffs like it punches the air out of him: ‘_Yeah.’_

Then he leans out of the bunk, waist stretched out spectacularly. He returns with a pillow, which he props under you. He slicks his cock, lower lip trapped between his teeth. He looks up and catches you watching. Everything, you want to look at everything, but his mouth most of all.

He sinks into you and his head tips back, baring the length of his throat. A guttural noise as he bottoms out, as you remember to breathe. Adjust.

‘You good?’

Nod. _‘Move.’_

Roll your hips. It makes him gasp. Slow, sinuous, so you feel every moment of it. Feel the shiver in his arms, where they’re bracketing your shoulders. Rub your heel on the small of his back, encouraging. So he thrusts, but careful, like you’re going to break. You’re not going to break.

‘That’s it,’ you tell him. ‘More.’

Right hand on his waist. There’s a bruise, already beginning to fade. Press, only very gently, and watch his response. Watch his mouth fall open, eyes refocus on you, brows drawn together. Move faster, clamping around him, metal fingers pressing a little harder now. Not so much encouraging anymore, as daring him. Reminding him: pilots are a type. You’re both hot-blooded.

That makes him fuck you properly. The snug space of the bunk traps the heat between you, keeps you tight together. Rough, since you can’t always keep a limb from hitting a wall, not while you’re chasing a rhythm you both like. He kisses you, growling into your mouth. Bite his lower lip, growl back. Cup his beautiful face in your hand, so you can feel his brows knit with pleasure. Touch his mouth when he pulls away for breath. His lip trembles as he tries to speak, without slowing down. He steals a hazy glance at you: he’s getting close, almost lost in it. See as he focuses, tries again.

‘Touch yourself,’ he asks. ‘Come on, while I’m still—still in you.’

His cheek heats up. Kiss it, sliding your hand down between your bodies. You’re half-hard, still wet from his mouth. Remind him with a snap of your hips to keep thrusting, keep going, while arousal rolls up your spine, sparks behind your eyes. He’s keeping himself on the edge, you know, because he’s biting his lip again. Ridiculous hair falling in his face. Shaking.

You cry out, when you come. You don’t mean to, but you do: everything tight, bright, warm. Overwhelming. It sets him off, and he’s even louder, faster. Everything about him is _more. _He’s hoarse by the time he collapses on you, heavy and damp and lovely. Wriggling half-heartedly, like he knows he’ll squash you if he stays too long. But you stroke his hair, kiss his temple. Eventually, with a reluctant noise, he tumbles off to one side. You reach up and pull his blanket down: it’s easier than getting yours out from underneath. He paws for you, pulling you close, so you’re nestled in his arms.

Sleep. Don’t dream, just this once.


	8. Chapter 8

For six months, he flies with you, hauling cargo and collecting intel. He doesn’t get restless. That doesn’t mean it isn’t time. He’d protest if you said it to his face, but he’s a fighter pilot at heart. You will only slow him down.

You are, deep down, selfish.

Find the General, between meetings. Pull her aside. She knows already—she always seems to know. ‘Poe?’

‘He’s ready.’

‘Are _you?’_

Shake your head. Smile. Blink back tears. She holds your arm, squeezing gently.

‘He’s going to be great,’ you tell her. ‘The best.’

‘I think so,’ she nods. ‘Do you want me to tell him?’

Be brave. Someone told you to be brave, once. ‘I’ll do it.’

You tell him. Congratulate him. He smiles brighter than the sun. Hugs you so tight you think you might burst.

Slip away while he celebrates, before he thinks to say goodbye. It’s not goodbye, anyway.

You miss him on the ship, but it’s not lonely. You never are.

*

The Rebels become the Resistance. You end up overseeing logistics during the move from Yavin to D’Qar. No time to shoot the breeze with old trainees, not when you’re setting up new supply lines, organising the necessary reconnaissance in this sector. If you thought the world revolved around you, you’d say the General set it up to keep you busy.

Regardless, it works. You get the warehouses in proper order. Do a circuit of all the nearby ports. It takes time. Fly a few hauls, get the lay of the land. Spend too much of your own money securing a shipment of new astromechs. They roll around your freighter and trill constantly. For the first time in years, the ship is _loud, _so loud you’re almost grateful to offload them when you get back to D’Qar.

You see him around the D’Qar base, the orange astromech rolling at his heel. Sometimes, he sees you. Comes and visits you in the hangar. You talk. It’s no more than talking, but he sits close. His touches linger. It’s the easy, worn-in intimacy of two shipmates.

‘You saw it all, didn’t you,’ he says. You’re sitting on the lip of the loading ramp, watching ships come and go on the runway.

Shrug. He’s exaggerating, but he needs to say whatever it is.

‘You never wanted to give up?’

’No,’ you tell him. It’s true. ‘What else is there to do?’

He laughs to himself. The sun is setting. Some shuttles leave the atmosphere, leaving glowing trails in the purple sky. ‘You could just fly.’

‘It’s never just flying,’ you say.

His droid sings out to him binary. He grins. ‘Okay, buddy, I’m coming.’

He scoots himself off the lip of the ramp, jumping to the floor. Looks back up at you.

‘I’ll see you around, Bodhi.’

*

Kid never loses his nose for trouble. He gets a reputation for it. Daring high-stakes missions that he escapes by the skin of his teeth. Gossip gets around the base quicker than the recruitment posters with his face on them.

Always lucky saves, in the nick of time.

You know, because you have the security clearance. You read reports. Sometimes, you send an old trainee to follow up a hunch.

No such thing as luck, and all.

The reports arrive before he does. A standoff between Black Squadron and the First Order. Stormtroopers had hostages. Threw them out of a shuttle, when negotiations went sour.

The astromech finds you. He bumps against your leg, chattering. You never got the hang of binary—you catch _broken _and _friend_—but you follow him, out past the runway to the forest. A shock of orange between the trees.

The droid struggles with the underbrush, but you clamber through and sit on the log next to him.

‘You sent Snap to bail me out, didn’t you?’ his elbows are on his knees, helmet dangling from his hands. Fingers working the padding compulsively, while he stares out at the woods.

Just sit with him. Let it be what it is.

‘You always seem to know,’ he grits out. ‘Before I get back.’

‘Perks of being the spymaster,’ you say. He shakes his head wryly.

‘Gonna tell me it wasn’t my fault?’ he asks.

Always be truthful. The best way out is through. ‘Was it?’

He swears, scrubbing the heel of his palm across his eyes. Glance over. His nose is red. Leaking.

‘It’s just so _easy _for them,’ he snarls. ‘Everyone says they’re gonna lose. But every day until then, they win.’

‘Yep,’ you say.

Be as solid, as steady as the trees when he leans on you. Let him shudder, silently, and bury his face in your shoulder. One arm around him.

Eventually, a sniffle. ‘Do you think I’m soft?’

‘No,’ kiss his hair. ‘I think it’s the hardest thing in the world.’

Stay, a while, in the wilderness.


	9. Chapter 9

You talk to Galen about it, since he never goes away. Just as there can be no _before _the creature, there is no _after. _It only waits, in the cold.

‘What a useful thing it is,’ Galen remarks. ‘Hero worship.’

Catch a tentacle around your finger. If you stay still, it will grow on you like a vine around a ruin. Until you don’t know whether it’s holding you together, or pulling you apart.

‘How easy it is to mistake for love.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ you remind it. ‘Not if I loved you.’

It smiles. You don’t quite remember what Galen’s smile looked like anymore, but you know that wasn’t it. ‘Did you love me?’

‘Would they have let me live, if it wasn’t the truth?’

This conversation is a circle. The same words, in a different order. But you are right. You loved him, so it didn’t matter why.

It changes tactics. ’The best things always slip through your fingers.’

‘Not for you,’ you hold up your arm, where it has looped around into complex knotwork. ‘You’ve got so many of them.’

The creature never had any sense of humour. Galen’s expression falters: a chill in the air.

‘Remind me, was this the end?’ it asks. A note of uncertainty, in Galen’s heavy accent. ‘Or is it the beginning?’

‘I don’t know,’ you confess. ‘I always get lost in the middle.’

How easily the solid ground breaks underfoot. But not here: in hyperspace. Feel the loose gasket rattling.

*

The Jakku mission is risky. The General trusts him, and so do you: you insist you do. It’s the intel you don’t trust. Too easily intercepted.

You plot your next route through Burke’s Trailing, nearby. Just in case.

Poe doesn’t report back. You drop into a hotspot and check the comm frequencies. You can’t run decryption on board, but you don’t need to. A transmission from the First Order. Only one reason for them to be out in this sector.

You pray. Praying is easier than hoping. It’s hope as a ritual. A conversation. Hope, with something else to blame.

How easy it is, to die for a map.

You’ve taught him well. He can take care of himself. But you’re ready, when the distress signal pings. You recognise his cadence in the transcript.

Pick him up. Kid is a mess of sand and dried blood, his jacket and his X-Wing and his beloved astromech lost. Clean him up, wrap him in a towel. Set a course back to D’Qar.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says flatly. Glances at you through dark, wet eyelashes.

You know, then. You weren’t sure. But you remember this better than anything.

Sit beside him. He tumbles into your arms, half in your lap. His hands end up fisted in your shirt, the front of it getting damp as he sobs. Hold onto him.

‘I failed. I tried, I had it, I had him, I just had to hold out. It was _all I had to do…’ _his voice raises, suffused with anger. At Ren; at himself. ‘I thought I could. I was strong. It hurt so much and I didn’t care, I thought I didn’t care but he just _pulled it out of me. _I wanted to stop him, Bodhi, I _tried, _but I didn’t, I’m_ sorry…’_

Some of it is muffled, because he stays buried in your chest. It doesn’t matter. You know already.

Everyone cracks, with enough pressure.

Tell him this. Tell him as best you can, that sometimes it’s not enough. Not when the entire weight of the Empire bears down on you. And you don’t win. You don’t.

He gambled, he lost. And he’ll carry it for as long as it takes.

Keep holding him, until his breathing evens out. Until his hands unclench and his thumb brushes your shoulder, where the scars fade back into skin. He remembers the place.

‘Hey,’ he says, a bit of mischief back in his voice. ’I flew a TIE fighter.’

Clutch him tight, bury your nose in his ridiculous hair. ’How were the vestibulars?’

The laugh punches out of him, still wet. _‘Incredible.’_

There it is. Still a little starlight, in his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

‘There’s this new guy,’ Poe is grinning like an idiot, like he can’t stop. Like he’s in love already. You know he is, because he says: ‘Bodhi, you’ve gotta meet him.’

And you do. He’s fresh from the Empire. Jumpy, defensive, a motormouth. Filled with the urge to prove himself, because he’s just lost everything that used to matter.

He shakes your metal hand. Looks you in the eye a moment, and he guesses. All of it, in a moment. He knows you too.

Tells you his name. Plenty of worlds where people only have one name.

You should tell Poe: _this boy will shatter you into a million pieces._

You can always put yourself back together again.


End file.
